Timmy seems to be failing again. He just paces or sleeps and never seems happy. It is an existence that I wish on no one. Sometimes I grab him and try to steady him and hold on to him and this may or may not settle him down when he seems agitated. He reminds me so much of the elderly people me and Gustavo visit in the nursing home. Some of them seem ok with just existing, and others seem really not ok and not happy to still be in their bodies in this world and they’re ready to be done.

But we make them wait it out. Keep them clean and fed and as comfortable as is realistic. Could you imagine, just having to pick out a day and time and decide that’s the day when your life needs to be done with? Like scheduling a tooth cleaning. Because it’s not getting any better and really only going to get worse. I don’t know if is this a burden or a privilege that we can do it with our animals. I haven’t picked out a day yet. It doesn’t quite seem to be right.

I think about this old man we visit, who can still sit up in his wheelchair, and who tries to talk sometimes, but just breath comes out his mouth and tears always run down his cheeks. His skin has all these lesions. He can just move a hand enough to run it across the dog’s fur.

I know one of these days we’ll go to the nursing home and he won’t be there any more, but so far, he is. Just sitting there. He has had enough breath to whisper me his name and that he loves dogs. Someone managed to get a clean shirt on him, and all day he sits there in his checkered shirt, waiting.